1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the field of farm equipment and, more particularly, to a pull bar mounting bracket assembly for a tractor.
2. Description of the Related Art
To reduce the time needed to fully plow, fertilize, harvest and otherwise work a field using a tractor, equipment being pulled by the tractor to perform these tasks has been widened to increase the width of the swath covered with each pass of the tractor. One way to achieve this increased width is to use two or more pieces of equipment connected to one another in a side by side arrangement, thereby at least doubling the swath width. As the number of equipment units is increased, the pulling load on the tractor is, of course, increased. If the load becomes too great, the backward drag on the rear of the tractor may cause the front end of the tractor to rise up off the ground. To prevent this, the front of the tractor is provided with a weight rack onto which a desired number of weights may be secured to provide ballast to keep the front end of the tractor down and the tractor level.
While the weights stabilize the tractor when pulling a wide assembly of multiple pieces of equipment including, for example, a center piece of equipment and two or more side or wing pieces of equipment, the connections between the center piece and the wing pieces of equipment are stressed when the tractor moves forward. More particularly, since only the center piece of equipment is typically hitched to the tractor, the wing pieces are pulled along with the center piece through their respective connections to the center piece. This can result in the wing pieces bending back relative to the center piece as the equipment is pulled.
To address the bending back problem, a pull bar is mounted on the front of the tractor, typically to the weight rack. The pull bar extends parallel with the tractor's axles, and extends beyond the width of the tractor on either side thereof. Pull chains or cables are attached between the ends of the pull bar and the wing pieces of the equipment assembly. The pull chains thereby pull directly on the wing pieces to help rigidify and stabilize the equipment assembly being pulled by the tractor.
The pull bar mounting arrangement for each tractor make and model can differ from that of other tractor makes and models, so that each pull bar mounting structure is typically specific to a particular tractor make and model. Hence, according to known methods, pull bars are mounted to the weight rack in different ways in an ad hoc manner depending on the tractor. As new model years are released, the manner in which the pull bar must be mounted may be different than the previous model, requiring the tractor to be customized with appropriate drilling and bolting arrangements in order to mount the pull bar to the new model year tractor. The weight racks on the front end of the tractors, however, typically remain the same.
Therefore, a need exists for a pull bar mounting assembly that can be readily mounted on and transferred between different models of a given make of tractors, thereby effectively standardizing the pull bar mount for that make of tractor.